Experimental C output

The driver can translate a limited subset of Pop into C11 source:

pop transpile app.pop --to c

This backend is experimental and intentionally smaller than native LLVM compilation. It is useful for inspecting simple lowering and for runtime-free programs; it is not a second complete implementation of every Pop feature.

The supported core includes typed integer operations, direct function calls, conditionals, literal string and integer output, and a no-argument entry that returns no value or an Int status.

Features that require Pop’s managed runtime are rejected rather than translated incorrectly. This includes records, tagged unions, classes, closures, managed arrays and tables, and other operations needing runtime allocation or tracing. Some control-flow forms that rely on native runtime safe points are rejected as well.

Always treat the transpiler’s diagnostic as authoritative for a particular program. Code accepted by pop check or the LLVM backend is not guaranteed to be in the C subset.

The C output still needs a C11 compiler if you want to turn it into an executable. Pop does not promise source-level ABI compatibility between the generated C and arbitrary hand-written C code in this release.